People gotta die: A Killdozer sing-along cheat sheet

Some bands shroud their vocals in cryptic prose and mystic mumbling, imparting a sense of ambiguity to their doubtlessly profound lyrics. Madison's Killdozer, on the other hand, wants you to hear, feel, and smell every last filthy fucking syllable. Sounding like a man who's had his head ripped off and his neck shit down, bassist-vocalist Michael Gerald has led his merry band of Madison-based noisemongers through seven albums of sludgy, bludgeoning rock since its 1984 debut, Intellectuals Are The Shoeshine Boys Of The Ruling Elite. With the band recently reunited and conducting a short tour, including a Friday show at the High Noon Saloon, now is the perfect time to brush up on your Killdozer singalong skills. May the drunkest, sickest scumbag win.

"Hamburger Martyr"
Bookended by two exquisitely expectorated fuck-yous, "Hamburger Martyr" comes equipped with two of Gerald's most potent, indelible couplets: "I don't call this a hamburger / Hell, I could make a better hamburger with my asshole" and "You call this cup of shit coffee? / I'd rather drink from the dick of a goat." If you've ever harbored a secret ambition to wage wholesale genocide against the world's shitty short-order cooks--and who hasn't?--this is your anthem.

"The Pig Was Cool"
A twisted, hilarious tale of smoking weed with an officer of the peace, "The Pig Was Cool" sports one of Gerald's most nuanced vocal performances--that is, if by "nuanced" you mean "sounding like he's gagging on his own amputated gonads." As a meta-commentary on butt-rock rituality ("We were at the Journey show / The first three songs, we were hanging low / Then the band played 'Wheel In The Sky' / Me and the gang started getting high."), it's uncanny. As a singalong, it might just give you throat cancer.

"When The Levee Breaks"
While "The Pig Was Cool" bears only an implied juxtaposition between Killdozer's brutal humor and the narcissism of classic rock, the group's cover of Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks" goes one step further--by recasting the original's magisterial stomp as a slow-motion spasm of white-trash self-loathing. Instrumentally, the rendition is as skin-crawlingly bizarre as Gerald and crew's versions of Don McLean's "American Pie" and EMF's "Unbelievable." But considering the fact that Gerald is the vinegar to Robert Plant's bleach, there's no way the song--one of rock's best-known standards--can stand unscarred. Deconstruction or decimation? Uh, the band is called Killdozer, remember?